Because it's the Holidays, one has the tendency to do stuff that he might not be doing during the rest of the year. In previous years, I've done such things as play video games 24/7, or install Linux for the first time while skipping a family dinner. This year is no different, and I've been passing my old 2002 pictures of my first trip to Asia, specifically Hong Kong, Tokyo, the Shanghai region and Beijing (pics not up yet). I've been playing with levels in photo editor software, which is Gimp, in my case, and it has been doing marvels to make my pictures more colourful.

A massive blizzard that slammed into Ontario and Quebec, dumping mounds of snow, disrupting air travel and causing treacherous driving conditions, was expected to hit the Atlantic provinces next. [...] The storm left up to 30 centimetres of snow in parts of Ontario and 60 centimetres in some parts of Quebec. (CBC)

Yesterday, Yahoo! finally decided to release a statistics page for Flickr pro users. If you want your stats for Flickr, you must go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/USERNAME/stats/ in order to activate them. It must be a very tough job, computationally-speaking, to keep track of all clicks for every single one of your thousands of photos - even YouTube keeps only a minimal trace of how users get to a video page... But seriously, as the ad says, I am thrilled, because I can now determine how people find my photos. :)

Upon reading Chris' article about Montreal Chinatown's sudden metamorphosis for a movie called "Baja" (say the signs, but Chris mentions it is something called "The Punisher" instead), I was obliged to go take a look for myself. Indeed, the change is very amusing, as most store names remained the same, except for a brand new dim sum place called "Imperial". It was like an alternate reality where Quebec language laws did not exist!

At the corner of the virtual Eldridge & Grand (De la Gauchetière & St-Laurent) stood a newsstand typical of New York City. It turns out that one of my favourite eats in NYC, one random dirt-cheap dumplings house, is within a block of the real Eldridge and Grand.

A huge snow storm blanketed Montreal with a thick layer of snow (28cm during the past 24 hours, to be exact, which beats a record for a 3rd of December). In anticipation for the snowfall, I took a bunch of "before and after" pictures around the area where I live. The before pics were taken on Sunday, December 2nd at around 3:30PM and the after pics were taken on Monday at 11AM.

Il faisait drôlement doux pour un 21 octobre. The Indian Summer came late, and the wind blowing on Montrealers' faces today was surprisingly warm, comfortable. Along the way, I discovered an Asian snacks shop near Concordia, on De Maisonneuve close to St-Mathieu, below Tapioca Café, and formerly a comic books shop, that hides behind a nondescript "Dépanneur" sign. The sign above actually points to the existence of veritable Sichuan (Szechuan) food, which could be served at the place that is/was Tapioca Cafe, say some of my friends who have been recently. It has yet to be tried and integrated into Métro Boulot Resto, if deemed worthy.

It was indeed a really really nice day. Once more tomorrow, and it's "see you next year, summertime!".

Sunday's Bleating Hearts Show was at McGill University beautiful Birks Building's chapel. On the picture is the band Clues (Alden Penner, Brendan Reed, Bethany Or) sound checking right before the show.

I was not in China this year, and probably won't be back for some time, but my parents are currently there, and I could not help but post some of my father's pics (chosen so that they aren't of temples or other boring stuffs).

As we went out, we noticed a blue jay in the maple tree in front of our house. It was hammering on something, and it took us a bit to realize that it was in fact picking on a wasp nest, no less! My mother had been wondering where those wasps came from - we had infestations below the front porch, and even once, between the ceiling and 2nd floor right under my father's bedside table (where they indeed did quite some damage, leaving a mark on the wood, which we saw firsthand last year, as we were renovating).